Adopting Connor
Taking the Zenmobile to motherhood
By Susan Murphy

          It is one o'clock in the morning in a hotel room in Denver, thousands of miles away from our home in the East. I roll over in bed next to my husband, vaguely aware of a baby crying in the next room. Then a thought startles me awake: The baby is in my room. The baby is mine. I rush to pick up the infant - not with the joy I'd always thought I would feel at such a moment, but with a heavy heart, a knot in my stomach, and the undeniable conviction that this is all a mistake.
          The road to this baby has been long, with much soul-searching, great hope, and great disappointment along the way. After years of infertility treatments, my husband Flip and I decide to adopt, then lose months pursuing a private adoption that falls through. We sign on with the Denver agency on the recommendation of a friend, wait a year, then are chosen by a birth mother who changes her mind at the last minute. Just two weeks earlier, in the middle of May, we'd gotten a call from Rose, our social worker in Denver, who says that we have again been chosen by a birth mother. Julie is seventeen, the same age as the students I teach. She is living with her father and brother and wants to return to school. She is due within the month. We speak to her on the phone, the disappointments of the past eight years forgotten in our excitement. Maybe this is it. I tell few people this time but quietly buy a car seat, a diaper bag - all those pieces of baby paraphernalia that would be unlucky to purchase too soon. I write my final exams uncharacteristically early so that a substitute can step in. 
          On a weekend in June, we get the call saying that Julie has delivered a healthy baby boy, early, as she had predicted. Without even a goodbye to my students, we take off for Denver. On the plane I alternate between grading research papers and reading Penelope Leach, using my red pen to underline comforting passages about newborns and new mothers. Joy mixes with anxiety, an emotional cocktail. What does he look like? Will he feel like my child? Will I love him as my own?
          In Denver we rent a car (the license plate reads "ZEN," a gentle reminder that whatever happens, this is all a part of a larger journey) and check into a hotel near the airport used mostly by businessmen and overnight travelers, chosen because it has a "kitchen" with a refrigerator and a microwave. Not the best nursery for a newborn, but it will have to do. When I call housekeeping and ask them to send up a crib with extra towels "for the baby" they oblige with no questions about the whereabouts of this baby. Nor do they comment when we leave the hotel for the adoption agency the next morning and return that afternoon carrying an empty infant seat. Julie wants to meet us, we are told, and she wants a little more time to spend with the baby. A familiar terror returns to my heart. What if we aren't what she expected? She will change her mind. And who could blame her? How do you say good-bye to your baby?
          The next day we meet Julie and take her and her best friend Tammy to lunch. The baby is at home with Julie's father. Julie is what my father would call a "big girl" - tall, with red hair, blue eyes, and freckles. She has a sassy adolescent edge that I would love if she were my student but under these circumstances terrifies me. I find myself talking more to Tammy, a hairdressing student who is responsible for turning Julie from a blonde to a redhead and whose warmth and concern for all of us seem far beyond her years. Julie connects with Flip's iconoclastic humor, thank God, and we get through lunch, talking more about Julie and her plans for the future than about the baby. She is unhappy with the agency because her social worker left to go on vacation. It is clear to me that she does not like authority and I hope she forgets that I am a teacher. Yet, teacher-like, I can't help but be relieved that she seems so bright. She calls the baby Jonathan and tells us that he is a good baby with a funny little cry. Julie and Tammy have hamburgers, onion rings, Cokes, dessert. I stick to my high-anxiety comfort food diet: grilled cheese and tea.
          On our third day in Denver, we once again set out from the hotel to the agency carrying the infant seat. Today is the day that Julie's minister is to conduct the farewell ceremony, the day that we will not only see the baby but take him "home" with us. However, when we arrive at the agency, Rose tells us there has been another setback. Julie's minister is not available. One of the other social workers may be able to get a minister to fill in but it's still not clear that Julie will go along with the plan. Go out to lunch, she says. And pray. I pray - over grilled cheese and tea - to my Grandmother O'Connor who died when I was a baby, because we plan to name the baby Connor. Connor Jonathan, out of deference to Julie.
          When we return to the agency, the new ceremony is set for two o'clock at a local Army base. We park our Zenmobile outside the military chapel and stand in the back like brides waiting for uncertain grooms. Julie arrives, carrying a baby wrapped in a receiving blanket, her eyes red, her mouth set, looking less like a teenager, more like a mother. This is hard. With her are the faithful Tammy and a short, round man with a crewcut - her father, Richard. We introduce ourselves. She passes the baby silently to Flip, and I feel a pang that she didn't choose me. We eagerly study him. One of us says, "He's beautiful." He is. Blue eyes too big for his little face survey the world with calm interest. Julie has dressed him in a new outfit of soft yellow cotton, no doubt purchased for this occasion. The outfit is impossibly small but still is too big on him, the sleeves rolled back to reveal tiny hands above the fold of the blanket.
          We all walk to the front pew like a bizarre wedding party. A chaplain in Army camouflage prays for all of us, blesses the baby and the gold cross Julie has purchased for him, this baby who will be raised Jewish by a Catholic mother. Flip passes the baby, who seems perfectly at peace, to me. I feel wonder and gratitude that it has finally happened.
          Then we adjourn to a bare church hall for a surreal reception with the social workers, the chaplain, the baby, and his two families. We make polite small talk as if what was happening was perfectly normal. On one of the long cafeteria tables is a sheetcake, provided by the agency, white with "God Bless Jonathan" in blue frosting on it. For some reason this strikes me hard. This is her baby. She named him Jonathan. 
          To ease her discomfort, Julie jokes about how much work awaits me and what I am getting myself into. When the baby needs to be changed, she grins wickedly at me. I spring to the task, eager to have something to do, confident that all my experience with younger siblings, nieces, and nephews, not to mention my obsessive reading of Penelope Leach on the plane, will carry me and impress everyone, especially Julie, that she has made the right choice. Instead I fumble awkwardly, put the diaper on backwards (the designs go in the front, not the back), and much to Julie's amusement I have no wipes in my diaper bag, the single most essential supply. (Penelope, in her quaint British way, recommends warm cloths and cotton balls.) I am flustered, betrayed by Penelope Leach and her ignorance of American products. Donít worry, you'll be an expert soon enough, the social worker says. Everyone laughs. We pose for pictures, my heart growing heavier by the minute as I smile falsely. What am I doing here? I am taking another woman's baby. 
          I give her a gift, a necklace made out of a crystal that is supposed to protect women. An absurdity, I think. A necklace in exchange for a baby? But she likes it. She is quieter now. I thank her. She doesn't want to leave. She tells me about the baby's feeding schedule, when he wants to be burped, tells me again about his weak cry. This is hard for her but I want her to go. I want everyone to go. We walk out to the parking lot so Julie and her father can give us the baby things they have in the car: a white wicker bassinet, lovingly decorated with blue bows, a pale green afghan made for Julie by her mother who died when Julie was a child. She wants the baby to have it. A box of clothes, bottles, diapers, car seat. They invent reasons to stay, showing us how the car seat works, postponing the final goodbye. My heart is breaking for so many reasons, none of which I can identify. She kisses the baby again, and us. I want to cry: This is wrong. As their car is emptied and ours is filled, I feel heavy with someone else's burden. The baby on my shoulder, so quiet all afternoon, starts to fuss. Finally I watch their departing car which seems to be taking with it all of my life as I have known it. I fight the urge to call them back, feeling that weíve somehow fallen for a very elaborate hoax. We get into the Zen car, Flip driving, me in the back with the baby in the car seat. In the mirror I see Flip wipe his eyes over and over as he tries to maneuver the car through rush hour traffic back to the agency. I am relieved to be alone to sort out my thoughts but this is all I can come up with: It's only eighteen years, and then you'll have your life back. 
          That afternoon I hold the baby as we sit in the social workerís office and sign endless papers, all of which say the same thing: This is your baby. This is what you have been hoping for all these years. This is your new life. Had I been so caught up in the journey that I had lost sight of the destination? After all this time in preparation, what had felt like an eight-year pregnancy, how could everything feel so wrong? The baby, so perfect, is now sleeping peacefully in my arms, blissfully unaware that his new mother is a fraud, feeling miserable, mentally unbalanced, and wondering how to tell the social worker and my husband that I've changed my mind. Instead I say nothing, letting them mistake my tears for joy.
          That night the baby, who has his days and nights mixed up, calls me out of an exhausted sleep. For most of the day I have been surrounded by people from the adoption agency, and even back at the hotel the delighted housekeeping workers drop in to see the new arrival, the phantom baby who has finally materialized. But at one in the morning, with my husband and the rest of the world sleeping soundly, I am alone with this baby. Alone and miserable, my predicament washing over me anew. How will I get out of this one? His cry is small, as Julie said, but not weak, and quite insistent. A dim light from the parking lot outside the window comes in from between the drapes. The light on the telephone next to the bed flashes that we still have messages. I donít want to talk to anyone from home. What do I say? I've changed my mind? 
          I throw back the covers and pad over to the hotel crib whose edges I have lined with rolled up towels in place of a cushioned bumper. The baby, his face twisted in distress, is wrapped securely in a flannel receiving blanket, as per Penelope, over the new cotton sleeper I have changed him into that night after he spit up some of his formula. I slip my hand under his head, surprisingly heavy for such a small body. Before I can even pull him to me, he stops crying. Now the room is quiet except for my husband's soft snoring. As I look at the baby, his gaze meets mine, clear and steady, not like a baby's at all. I hold him like that, drawn by an ageless serenity in his eyes, still locked into mine. And then something very strange happens.
          I feel - and see - something that I somehow know to be his spirit - large, strong, wise - reach out to meet my spirit, as a reassuring parent might reach out a hand to a reluctant child. My spirit rushes forward gratefully and the two presences form an arc over us. And then I feel his soul speak to me, not audibly but as clearly as if it came through a megaphone. This is what he says: It's okay. I am yours. You can relax now. An overwhelming feeling of peace encompasses me, as palpable and as comforting as the message itself.
          The entire episode takes less than a minute, but its impact will stay with me forever. I do relax, immediately, feeling unspeakable joy, gratitude, and love. The baby, my son, goes back to being a baby. And I become his mother. Our roles shift to the more normal order of things as I take care of him, all my fears about having made a mistake vanished in my newfound and unshakable love.
          I know that biological mothers sometimes have a hard time bonding with a new infant; all the books, Penelope included, will tell you not to expect the maternal love at first sight that we see in the movies. Still, nine months of intense proximity and of shared sustenance must give biological mothers a distinct advantage that adoptive mothers do not have. Adoptive mothers have the burden of choice: Is this child the right one for me? I was lucky enough to have a road sign from the Universe, a divine tour guide who tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Yes."
          Connor is now six years old - a wonderful, happy, maddening, challenging, funny, bossy, curious, imaginative, spirited, loving boy who rushes headlong into life. His weak cry has been replaced by a husky-voiced, non-stop commentary on the world around him. He has taken us for quite a ride in our Zenmobile, as children always do. He knows that on our first night together he looked straight into my eyes and his heart spoke to mine. Someday I will tell him the rest of the story about that night in Denver. In the meantime, I am enjoying the ride, knowing that this is our ride because he is our son. He's not in the next room; he is here with us. It's okay. I am yours. Yes.
 
About the author:

SUSAN MURPHY is a writer and English teacher who lives in Connecticut with her husband, their son Connor, 8, and their daughter Grace, 1. Her work has been read on public radio and has appeared in American Catholic. Recently she placed first in a national essay contest sponsored by Ladies Home Journal More magazine and Revlon. She is coming to the end of a two-year leave of absence from teaching, so she is writing as fast as she can.

Meeting your baby, whether through birth or adoption, is a highly charged moment. Little wonder that it is accompanied by a host of conflicting emotions. Last year, when we adopted our daughter Grace, I bonded with her in a very different way - more gradual, less dramatic, but ultimately just as satisfying. And Connor, who got to see the adoption process in action this time, loves his little sister with all his generous heart. 
 

Home              Current Issue              Upcoming Issue              Subscribe